


Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

by whymylife (nabringa)



Series: So I Commend the Enjoyment of Life [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Emotional Eating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I promise, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Romani Dick Grayson, Sorry guys, Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, bruce and donna troy and damian all show up for a hot second, does it count if its more about a slow decent into hell?, it's a thing, just references to Tarantula if you don't like reading about her, of a sort, using food to regulate your emotions, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nabringa/pseuds/whymylife
Summary: There was one dish his mama always made after a particularly bad day. She called it pirogo. It was a pudding, noodle pudding, creamy and sweet and warm from the small counter-top oven in their trailer. It tasted like raisins and walnuts and cinnamon and burned tongues.There was one day, when Dick came back to the trailer with his face covered in mud and bruises and tears, when mama had wiped his face clean and kissed his cheek and made him his very own mini pirogo for dinner.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Alfred Pennyworth
Series: So I Commend the Enjoyment of Life [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860463
Comments: 20
Kudos: 135





	Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Understanding Versus Reality](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17934590) by [Mintoki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mintoki/pseuds/Mintoki). 



> So... I read a thing that scarred me for life (in a good way, I will never be the same) and then saw some memes about Dick Grayson's cereal addiction and felt personally attacked, so I wrote this. In, like, a day. It's kinda a mess, and I don't really even read the comics so if you see a character or event that I absolutely butchered, let me know! I was being purposefully vague to avoid huge continuity problems, cause it's the details that get ya. 
> 
> TW: emotional eating, bingeing and purging, substance abuse (of a sort), brief allusions to the tarantula incident

There was one dish his mama always made after a particularly bad day.

(Mama called it pirogo, but when Dick looked up recipes with Alfred years later the only thing they could find somewhat similar was called kugel. But by that time it had been years since his mama had cooked for him, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to tell the difference.) 

(He didn’t know what he would do if he couldn’t.)

It was a pudding, noodle pudding, creamy and sweet and warm from the small counter-top oven in their trailer. It tasted like raisins and walnuts and cinnamon and burned tongues. Dick could never remember what constituted a bad day back then-- back before That Day, before his life became a long string of increasingly worse bad days-- but Dick figured it had to do with a botched performance or a failed practice session.

There was one day, when Dick came back to the trailer with his face covered in mud and bruises and tears, when mama had wiped his face clean and kissed his cheek and made him his very own mini pirogo for dinner.

***

Dick’s first night at St. Jude's, a volunteer kitchen worker-- or maybe an angel, he never saw her again after that-- found him crying in a corner and gave him a bowl of cold bread pudding. He nearly choked on the first bite, raisins and walnuts and cinnamon mixing an unfamiliar medley in his mouth, on his frozen tongue, but he gulped down the rest of the sweet and slimy mush with desperation and tears.

It wasn’t enough to fix the new hole in his heart-- to fill the cracks and crevices-- but at least the cinnamon tasted like home, made the ache more familiar.

***

Dick’s first night at the manor, Alfred made him cinnamon tea before bed, and Dick dumped half the sugar bowl into his cup and smiled and laughed until he was safe in his room and could lick his spicy-sticky lips and cry for the home he had lost and the home he had-- maybe-- found.

***

Alfred didn’t make pirogo. He didn’t make goulash or bogacha or janija either, but he made roast beef and baked salmon and all sorts of pasta dishes, which were fine after Dick got used to them.

After enough time had passed that he was comfortable asking for things-- after enough time had passed that he stopped worrying about being sent away, sent back-- Dick asked about some of his mama’s dishes, asked if Alfred would mind making some. Alfred had pulled out a laptop and several old cookbooks with titles like ‘Eastern European Cooking’ and ‘Cuisines of Eastern Europe’ and spent an afternoon with him finding new recipes to try. They never tasted quite right, but some were close enough.

(Dick never quite got the courage to ask Alfred to make kugel.)

Alfred did make hot chocolate for after long patrols. And chocolate chip cookies for when someone got injured enough to be bed-ridden for a few days. And chocolate cake for special occasions, like birthdays and holidays.

There was one day, when Dick came home from school with ‘gypsy bastard’ and ‘circus brat’ and ‘charity case’ ringing in his ears and sore ribs from a criminal’s lucky hit the night before and the hole in his heart empty and dry--

There was one day when Dick suck into the kitchen after dinner and stole a bag of chocolate chips.

(He knew Alfred would notice they were missing, but hopefully wouldn’t say anything about it. Dick was allowed to get snacks from the kitchen. This was just a snack.)

(A ‘feel good’ snack, sure. But still a snack.)

He climbed out of his window onto the roof, and ate the entire bag of chocolate chips in the shadow of a gable. The chocolate melted warm and sweet on his tongue, and ran down inside to gather in the gaps in his heart left by That Day and everything that followed, and one bag of chocolate chips was just enough to fill each crack and crevice full.

He ate the entire bag of chocolate chips, then clutched at his aching ribs and sobbed it all out again until his heart was as dry and cracked and broken as before and it was time to wash his hands and mouth and change for patrol.

(He patrolled with a smile that night, pain dragged to the surface but spilled out completely. There was still a hole in his heart-- in his soul-- in his heart, but that was ok. That was fine. He knew how to fill it now, even if it emptied again fast.)

(Alfred never did say anything about the chocolate chips. He even started buying an extra bag for Dick to... for Dick to snack on.)

***

Whenever Dick got into a fight with Bruce during patrol, or just after patrol or just before patrol-- or every time they saw each other really, since patrol seemed to be the only thing linking their lives these days-- whenever he got into a fight with Bruce bad enough one of them had to walk away, he turned his comm off and walked straight out of the alley/cave/manor and to the nearest corner store. He bought a bottle of water and whatever was cheap and had sugar in it, and found a handy rooftop to eat it on.

(After particularly bad fights-- the kind that was becoming more and more frequent-- Dick bought trail mix with raisins and walnuts and chocolate chips, and ate it on the highest rooftop he could find.)

The break from Bruce helped him calm down. The sugar helped him calm down, too.

In his health class at school the teacher had explained that sugar releases dopamine to the brain. Dopamine was the ‘feel good’ chemical. As far as his teacher had explained and as far Dick knew, all it did was make people feel good. It chased away all the nasty negative feelings like sadness and anger and hurt and made people feel good. Dick just wanted to feel good.

(His teacher had also explained that dopamine surges were what made drugs like cocaine and heroin so addictive. But sugar wasn’t a drug. Sugar was a food. People ate sugar all the time, and nobody got addicted. Sugar addiction wasn’t a thing.)

(Was it?)

Dick always finished his snack-- because that's what it was, just a snack-- within twenty minutes, and was back to wherever he left Bruce to apologize or do whatever else was needed to fix the fall-out of the fight within forty-five, dumping his trash but keeping the bottle of water in hand to cover the sticky-sweet stench of his breath.

***

The Titans kept all sorts of junk food stocked in the tower. The person in charge of shopping rotated monthly, but whoever was currently on duty always made sure to get a list of snack requests before going out.

Dick never had much interest in chips or soda like the rest of his team, but he always requested a sweet breakfast food. Muffins, donuts, sugary cereal, it didn’t matter. As long as it was sweet. Eventually he stuck with cereal-- any cereal, the flavor or brand or whatever didn’t matter, just as long as it was sweet-- since it offered some health benefits in the form of milk.

Since it was Dick’s cereal, everybody knew not to touch it. That meant that they never knew how much of it he ate, or when he ate it, or how many boxes he really had stashed away.

(Dick wasn’t sure even he knew how many boxes he had stashed away. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.)

Mealtimes were pretty flexible, anyway. As long as everyone ate at least once a day, and before missions, and didn’t miss team pizza night, it didn’t matter when any of them ate. And as long as everyone actually took the vitamins and drank the protein shakes Donna passed out every morning, they would get all the nutrients they needed. Right? And it’s not like a team of teen superheroes who worked out and fought villains regularly were going to gain excess weight. Right? So it didn’t matter what they ate, either.

(It really didn’t matter what he ate. He wasn’t fat. He was never going to be fat. He worked too hard and burned too many calories to ever be fat. So it didn’t matter if most of his calories were empty. He needed empty calories.)

So Dick took vitamins and drank protein shakes under Donna’s watchful eye, and made sure to eat a fresh piece of fruit and boiled eggs before missions-- because those were healthy foods, and you needed healthy food before a mission, but nobody really knew how to cook anything besides eggs in various forms-- and ate sugary cereal for breakfast and for snacks.

Alfred-- and probably his high school health teacher, too-- would be scandalized if they knew he was subsisting primarily on protein shakes with sugary cereal for snacks.

(Did it still count as a snack if he ate two or three bowls?)

(Did it still count as a snack if he only ate because he was sad, or angry, or hurting, and didn’t want anybody to know? Because he couldn’t let anybody know. Because he had to be the strong one. Because he had to wield his smile like a weapon-- wear it like a shield, like armor-- and it had become so much a part of him that even Dick had forgotten how to take it off. Because he had to keep the mask-- the smile-- the mask on and he couldn’t do that forever if he felt bad, so he needed something to make him feel good, so he ate. Dick ate until he stopped feeling sad and angry and hurt and instead felt good. Felt like the hole in his heart had finally started to fill, for real this time. Felt like he could keep the mask on a while longer.)

(Did it still count as a snack, then?)

***

When he found out about Jason’s death, Dick went back to the manor for a while. He packed his snacks, and spent his first few nights out on the gabled roof eating dry cereal and chocolate chips by turns.

(Alfred had stocked up for him.)

Dick ate, and tasted sawdust and glue, and wondered how long it took to build up a tolerance to sweets, how long it took for the same amount of sugar to release less and less dopamine. How long it took for the taste of sweet to be permanently sickening.

(Dick wondered what he would do, if the day ever came that sugar didn’t make him feel good.)

Dick ate, and wondered why this trick wasn’t working like it used to. Why he still felt empty no matter what he filled himself with, and why his mask-- his smile-- his mask kept slipping no matter how hard he tried to keep it on.

(Dick wondered if that day hadn’t come already.)

(He wondered if it was too late to do anything about it.)

***

Moving to Bludhaven was… Surreal. The surroundings were different, but the routines were the same. The people were new, but still fit the categories Dick had been trained to sort them into. The best and worst part about moving was being alone. There was no Batman, there were no Titans. 

(There wasn’t any Robin, either, and Nightwing was not yet a familiar face in the mirror.)

There was so much freedom. There was a level of independence Dick thought he had longed for, but now found frightening and lonely. Going home to an empty apartment where he was free to do what he wanted, so long as he was satisfied to do it alone. Doing his own laundry, waking himself up for work, setting his own patrol route and schedule. Buying his own groceries.

Buying his own food-- all of his own food-- was terrifying. For the first time in his life, Dick had complete control over his diet. It was like that with the Titans, other than Donna demanding health from everyone after morning workouts, but it was different in that Dick was not accountable to anyone for his eating habits. If he collapsed on patrol he wouldn’t endanger a teammate. If he wasn’t feeling up to a mission he could put it off. If he wanted to eat cereal and chocolate chips and take-out for the rest of his-- probably very short-- life, he could. Not that he wanted to, it was just. The possibility now existed.

Alfred set him up with some cookbooks and basic supplies, and Dick stuck to experimenting with his fancy new appliances and snacking on the same old cereal for the first month or so, but.

There was one night, when Dick came back from patrol with screams rigging in his ears and the blood of innocents he had failed to save staining his hands and guilt and grief so thick and dark he could taste it clogging his throat, choking him, drowning him--

There was one night when Dick came back from patrol and ordered a pizza. Well. Two pizzas. Pizza night had been a tradition with the Titans, and Dick missed it. He’d always ordered the pizza himself, and typically got an even mix of pepperoni and cheese along with the specialty requests. It felt wrong to not get one of each, and it would be nice to have leftovers.

Dick changed quickly without showering, sat down on the coach, and ordered two pizzas, a two-liter of coke, and a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the closest 24h pizza place. He didn’t move from his spot on the couch until he heard a knock on the door. He stood stiffly, collected his food, paid the bill. He sat back on the couch. Turned on the TV to a sitcom.

Dick ate the entire pepperoni pizza. Then he ate half the cheese pizza, and drank half the coke. He put the coke and leftover pizza in the fridge, sat back on the couch with a spoon, and ate the entire gallon of ice cream.

(He’d let it sit out while he ate the pizza, so it was half melted. He didn’t mind.)

Each bite tasted like water in a parched man’s mouth. Each bite felt right, and Dick felt the corners of his lips twitch back to where they were supposed to be as he finally turned his attention from his torn heart and aching body to the sitcom. It was pretty funny, actually. He would have to come back and watch the whole thing some day.

Each bite slid right into the cracks and crevices it was supposed to fill, and by the time he was finished, he only regretted not starting with the ice cream.

By the time the last episode of the sitcom finished, Dick was feeling much better.

By the time he got up to turn off the TV and take a shower before bed, his stomach had decided that while Dick might be feeling good, it most certainly was not.

By the time Dick got into the shower, he could feel something besides guilt and grief clawing its way up his throat. He reached down and clawed back, and threw up pizza and coke and mint chocolate chip ice cream in turns until everything was out, until the cracks and crevices were empty again and the hole in his heart was wider than ever before.

By the time Dick washed the vomit out of the tub, changed into sleep clothes, and got a glass of water to rinse his mouth with, his stomach had settled. His stomach had settled and his throat was fine, but the emotions he’d know he’d been swallowing down all day were fresh at the surface, and he let himself sob into his hands before climbing into bed and falling into a deep sleep.

(When Dick woke up the next morning-- a Saturday, thankfully-- he didn’t feel excellent, per say. But for whatever reason, he did feel good.)

(Sort of.)

***

(It’s not like he wanted to make it a habit-- it was a wasteful habit, and could damage his internal organs besides-- it’s not like he wanted to make it a habit, but when chocolate and cereal weren’t enough, Dick knew he had options.)

(It’s not like it felt good, because it didn’t. But afterwards felt… not bad. Like a release of something he hadn’t known he had been holding.)

(It’s not like he had particularly bad days regularly, anyway. He could afford to indulge on occasion.)

***

After his apartment building--

After Blockbuster--

After Tarantula--

After.

After he had pulled himself out of the rain, into the closest safe house, away from--

Away.

After he had gotten away, Dick pulled out every last scrap of food he had stashed in his safe house, and ate it all in one go. He took his time, working steadily through the cold canned goods and on to the protein bars and finishing up with the emergency military rations he kept in his go-bag.

(It didn’t matter that not a single bite of it was sweet. He just needed to get the taste of gunpowder and lipstick out of his mouth. He didn’t want to mar the safety and security of cinnamon and chocolate and sugar with-- )

After he finished, Dick stripped out of his filthy suit and dumped it on the floor with the empty cans and wrappers. He walked to the bathroom, stepped into the shower, turned the water on as hot as it would go, shoved his fingers down his throat, and threw it all up again.

As he scrubbed his skin raw and watched the half digested remains of a week's worth of food mix with blood and body fluids in the bottom of the tub, Dick distantly registered that he didn’t feel good.

(The hole was all encompassing-- a pit, a monster, a being in and off itself-- tearing at his soul from under his skin and screaming for more. Swallowing his despair, rage, agony; holding them ransom in the hopes of being filled again and again and again-- )

Dick did not feel good at all.

(But he wasn’t sure he felt bad, either.)

***

Dick made getting ice cream after patrol a tradition, when he took over as Batman. He told himself it was for Damian, to give the kid some normal childhood memories with his big brother. Unfortunately, Damian was not a huge fan of ice cream, and let his disgust with sweets in general be known loudly and repeatedly.

Dick still took him to get ice cream after patrol every night.

(Dick wasn’t-- He couldn’t-- He never wanted--)

(It was slipping. The mask-- the smile-- the mask was slipping more and more often, for longer and longer periods of time, and Dick needed it to stay in place. For Damian. This was for Damian. This wasn’t selfish. Dick needed this to feel good, so he could keep his shield, his armor, his mask-- his smile-- his mask in place and be there for Damian. Damian needed Dick to be strong, and Dick needed sugar to be strong, and stopping once a night for ice cream was better than bingeing in his bathroom at the manor.)

(Damian could suck it up and deal. Because the cracks were getting wider, and the crevices were getting deeper, and the hole was starting to swallow more than just emotions in it’s demands to be fed.)

***

Bruce came back.

After a few particularly bad days dealing with the guilt and the grief and the--

After a few particularly bad days, Dick kept going out for ice cream. Alone.

He usually picked something else up on the way home, too.

His performance on the field was fine, nobody-- least of all Alfred-- had said anything about his eating habits.

Yet.

(Dick knew something was wrong. He knew this was spiraling out of his control. He also knew that he didn’t really care at this point.)

(He wondered if anyone else would care.)

(Why would they if they hadn’t noticed by now?)

***

There was one day, when Master Richard came back to the manor with bulging shopping bags and blank eyes and ragged breaths and no attention to spare for those around him--

There was one day, when Master Richard came back to the manor and walked right past Alfred without smiling, or saying hello. Richard didn’t even make eye contact.

Alfred cared.

There were a few things to be done before a serious conversation could be had-- curious children to send away, teacups to rinse out-- but Alfred had everything in order shortly, and went to look in the most likely spots first.

Alfred found Master Richard in his bathroom, surrounded by empty pre-packaged bread pudding containers and covered in vomit and tears and snot, leaning over the edge of the bathtub with the water running as hot as it would go.

He pulled Master Richard away from the tub, wiped his face clean and brought him a glass of water. Riffling through the messy bureau drawers recovered a clean shirt and soft jacket.

After assisting Master Richard in cleaning himself up, Alfred led him down to the kitchen and sat him at the island across from the stove.

Alfred put the kettle on, and sat quietly next to Master Richard to wait for the whistle.

***

Alfred made cinnamon tea, and placed a brim-full teacup and saucer in front of him.

Dick reached for the sugar bowl, thought better of it, and pulled his hand back.

Dick drank the cinnamon tea plain.

It tasted like home, even without the sugar. And it felt... It felt good, going down. It didn't fill him up quite the same, but then. He was tired of being full and empty by turns.

(Maybe this... Maybe he could... Maybe.)

Dick looked at Alfred, and Alfred looked back.

Dick set down the teacup, and began to talk.

**Author's Note:**

> My Brain: People refer to themselves as having a relationship with food and their body. Does that mean that for some people, those relationships are abusive?
> 
> Me: YES. 
> 
> Sorry I couldn't end on a more hopeful note, but a lot of this draws directly from my own experiences. I'm still in the middle of this, and I think Dick will be too for a long time. Recovery starts with acknowledging the problem, but it can take years to come to a place where you feel like the battle is over. For those of you struggling, it's going to be hard and long and terrible in general, but recovery is worth it. You are worth it. 
> 
> NEDA helpline information: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/help-support/contact-helpline


End file.
